We’re at that point of the second round when a team could book their passage to the Conference Finals on any night. Such is the case for the Boston Bruins on the road in Montreal after they came away with a strong victory in Game 5.

Winning at Bell Centre isn’t an easy thing to do and there’s nothing more the Canadiens would like to do than to have one more crack at the Bruins in a Game 7. To do that Montreal has to find a way to slow the Bruins down on all lines.

Out West, the Ducks and Kings meet in a Game 5 that sees Anaheim returning home after taking both games in Los Angeles. If the Ducks can find a way to defend home ice, they might be in business. Now that they’ve evened-up the series and found a way to slow down the Kings, perhaps the confidence returns at Honda Center.

Without Daniel Briere in the lineup, the Canadiens’ power play struggled and with Douglas Murray playing alongside Mike Weaver on the third pairing, the Bruins had a defensive pair to get the match-ups they wanted to get things going against. The Habs may have had a physically tougher lineup to deal with Zdeno Chara and Milan Lucic, but life was a little too easy for Bruins.

How Montreal makes adjustments tonight will be the absolute factor in whether they head back to Boston for Game 7 or not. For Boston, they need to find a way to get David Krejci involved as he’s been more than quiet in this series.

It’s a bit unnerving to see the road teams win all the games in this series. It’s not that Anaheim or L.A. have overly distinct home-ice advantages, but more that the coaches couldn’t find ways to make their match-ups work for them.

After Games 1 and 2, the prevailing thought was how Bruce Boudreau was going to get his top line with Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry away from Anze Kopitar after he held them in check so well. After Games 3 and 4, the thought is how the Kings can slow down the rest of the Ducks forwards who have stepped up.

After being a major factor early on, the Kings would love to see the opportunistic Marian Gaborik return. The Ducks had their own version of a clutch scorer going in Devante Smith-Pelly.

The main man L.A. has to find a way to crack, however, is goalie John Gibson. After sporting a shutout in Game 4, he’s riding high and the team is doing so with him. Shaking the rookie’s confidence would get the Kings back on track at least a little bit.